Turkey: It is not elections and calls for peace, but the class war which
alone can put an end to exploitation, oppression and repression!

On Saturday, October 10th, a terrible bombing attack struck the event
organized by the “pro-Kurdish” HDP opposition party as a part of the
election campaign, and including various formations of the left (such as the
DISK trade union, , the Union of Doctors, the Union of Architects, a union
of civil servants etc.), for democracy, employment security and “peace” –
that is to say the resumption of negotiations between the PKK (Kurdistan
Workers' Party, a Kurdish nationalist organization engaged for years in
guerrilla actions in Turkish Kurdistan), and government authorities. The
outrage left about a hundred dead and over 240 injured. The organizers have
denounced the government's responsibility in the attack.

And it certainly fits in a growing climate of political tension; last June
there was an attack in Diyarbakir in Kudistan, against an electoral meeting
of the HDP, leaving 4 dead and 400 injured; on July 20 a suicide bombing by
a young Kurdish jihadist in Suruc a town on the border with Syria, killed 33
people at a rally of young Maoists who were close to the HDP. If the
liability of the “Islamic State” appears proven in both cases, the long-term
support of the ruling power toward this organization and its hostility to
the Syrian Kurdish fighters in Kobanî, certainly leaves plenty of room for
suspicions about the involvement of the authorities.

The AKP, the Islamic-conservative ruling party and President Erdogan, have
repeatedly accused not only the PKK which has ended the lull in the fighting
after the bombing of Suruc, but the HDP itself and its leader Demirtasof
“terrorism”. In recent weeks, dozens of public meeting places of this party
were attacked and sometimes even torched by thugs linked to the AKP without
the police stopping them; on the contrary a criminal investigation has
opened against Demirtas for “insulting the Turkish people, institutions
and organs of the State, the President”, “incitement to commit crimes
and terrorism” after in a press conference
he had denounced the culpable passivity of the police! The government has
also stepped up intimidation against the media and opposition journalists;
the headquarters of the main opposition daily Hurryet was attacked by
demonstrators who were led by a member of the AKP, opposition TV stations
were forced to close, etc.

On November 1 parliamentary elections will take place in Turkey, barely five
months after the previous June which saw the AKP finish clearly in the lead
(40.9% of votes). Although it was its fourth consecutive victory in the
elections, the AKP, losing nearly 9% of the vote, missed the absolute
majority that would allow it to achieve its objective of reforming the
constitution to introduce a presidential system. The electoral thrust of the
HDP, finishing for the first time with more than 10% of the votes at the
national level is seen as the cause of the relative defeat of the AKP. In
late August, following the failure of negotiations to form a coalition
government, the legislative assembly was dissolved and the holding of new
elections announced.

Numerous political analysts attribute the renewed clashes with PKK fighters
and the “anti-terrorist”
campaign to a maneuver by the government to stimulate a reflex of fear that
would increase the electoral chances of the AKP. And moreover Erdogan and
other official dignitaries were not reticent in declaring that if the AKP
had obtained 400 deputies (that is to say an absolute majority in
Parliament), there would not have been this outbreak of violence...

However Turkish events cannot be reduced to mere electoral motifs, let alone
the ambition of a man dreaming of becoming a new sultan. Turkey is facing
growing problems and contradictions; and it is these that have had the
effect of increasingly destabilizing the existing political equilibrium in
the country since the early 2000s under the hegemony of the AKP.

CAPITALIST EXPLOITATION AND PROLETARIAN STRUGGLES IN TURKEY

Paradise for the capitalists (Istanbul has more billionaires than Paris),
Turkey is a hell for the workers. It ranks second among OECD countries for
income inequality, just ahead of Mexico. But there are also regional
inequalities: in the Kurdish regions, which are less developed, the average
family income is only 29% of family income in the capital Ankara.

Unemployment is rising, passing above 10% since the end of 2014. This figure
may seem not very high, but it does not reflect reality because much of the
workforce is employed in the “informal” sector; if this sector is mostly
predominant in agriculture (90% of jobs are informal), it is widespread in
all branches of the economy; in industry, according to official statistics (Turkstat),
nearly a third of all jobs are informal, and this percentage is much higher
in the textile industry.

The proletarians who have informal jobs have virtually no social protection,
they receive lower salaries and they can be laid off practically overnight.
Employees usually work in small or very small firms that make up the
majority of the country's businesses (55% of workers are employed in
businesses with fewer than 10 employees), they bear the brunt of all of the
economic uncertainties of which these companies are the first victims.

Generally Turkish salaries are low, including in the formal sector and in
large companies. The average salary was estimated at 590 euros per month in
2014 (compared to 2597 in the United Kingdom, 2220 in France,
1615 in Spain, 1092 in Greece). The minimum wage has been set for 2015 at
424 euros per month (it is 1458 in France, 757 in Spain, 684 in Greece), but
this is the gross salary; take-home pay is lower by about 30% due to the
amount gobbled up by social charges; but on top of this a significant
portion of workers are paid below the minimum wage: over 16% of men and over
25% of women putting in a normal working day (at least 8 hours ) receive a
salary 30% lower on average than the net minimum wage!

The working day is very long: the legal working time is 45 hours per week,
but in 2011 more than 6 million people (more than 40% of the workforce)
worked from 50 to 70 hours or more. Although the employment of children
under 14 is prohibited, in 2012 there were almost 300 000 children 6-14
years working, particularly in agriculture where at harvest time children 10
years old work up to 11 hours a day. But even in industry those under the
age of 18 are numerous: the proportion of those 14-18 years old has even
increased from 16% to 28% between 1994 and 2006. According to the
International Labor Organization (ILO, UN organization), the average working
hours of children is among the highest in the world at 51 hours a week on
average. Consequently, the number of children killed in the workplace was 38
in 2012.

Moreover, Turkey is the leading country in Europe for the number of
work-place accidents, third worldwide, after Algeria and El Salvador,
according to the ILO: on average three workers are killed and 172 are
injured every day. Miners are the most numerous among the victims of Turkish
capitalism between 1955 and 2012, more than 3,000 miners died and over
360,000 were injured.

In May 2014 an explosion at a mine in Soma left 301 dead. Following this
tragedy, clashes occurred in the city, especially when 10,000 demonstrators
protesting against the lack of safety measures in the mine chanting “Erdogan
resign!” clashed with police forces; the Ministry of Labor had stated that a
recent inspection tour had found everything in order… A year later nine
surviving children have been indicted by the court for having organized a
protest and the blocking of a road in violation of the law; they face up to
six years in prison...

In total in 2014 there were 1886 deaths in accidents at work, and these
figures are official figures which probably leave out many of the accidents
in the informal sector. They call them accidents, but it is rather a real
bloody class war waged by the capitalists against the workers!

Inherited from the military regime, anti-strike laws are still in force;
they enabled the suspension for 60 days of a strike by steelworkers at the
beginning of this year and a strike in the ceramics industry in June, in the
name of “national security”…

But this anti-worker legislation could not prevent the wave of wildcat
strikes that hit the automobile industry in May and that originated in the
Bursa agglomeration. The movement was started at the Renault plant by
agitation against the collective contract signed by the official union Turk
Metal and for an alignment with the contract signed at Bosch (a 20% wage
increase) after a few days of striking; thugs of this yellow union went so
far as to attack a gathering of workers, provoking the wrath of all workers.

Starting off from Renault, the strike spread to other automotive companies
and other cities; Fiat, Ford, Tofas, Valeo, etc., more than 15,000 workers
came into struggle despite the opposition of Turk Metal and the agitation
even won over other sectors. Despite threats and repression (47 workers
arrested by police and hauled up to justice for organizing an illegal
strike), the workers stood firm and finally with the threat of widespread
conflict, the bosses and the government yielded. After 2 weeks of striking,
Renault workers obtained wage increases, the abandonment of prosecutions,
and especially the right to join the union of their choice. A vivid
demonstration that resolute workers' struggle is capable of facing down the
capitalists and their State, as repressive as it might be!

The growing economic difficulties in Turkey are felt not only by the
proletariat, but also by large sectors of the population, even with real
estate speculation in full swing and corruption scandals spilling over on to
the president's family. This is what explains the importance assumed in 2013
by the protests against the products of destruction of Gezi Park in
Istanbul: this movement, of a clearly petty-bourgeois orientation has been
able to garner hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country like
the “outraged” movement that took place in many countries. The HDP has
undoubtedly managed to capitalize electorally on some of this discontent.

THE KURDISH QUESTION

The Kurdish question is an important factor in domestic politics but also
outside Turkey. Always suspected of separatism, subject to political and
social discrimination reinforced by the military after the 1980 coup,
according to estimates the Kurds constitute 15-20% of the population of the
country. The Kurdish regions are the poorest and least economically
developed in Turkey, causing a strong emigration to other regions and
abroad: an important part of the Turkish proletariat, including those
emigrating to Europe are Kurds. The “Kurdish question” has become a central
question of the proletarian struggle: the resolute struggle against all
discriminations and repressions against Kurds, for the full equality of
rights, is essential to weld the ranks of the Turkish proletariat. For their
part the bourgeois obviously inflame divisions, sparking and fueling
nationalism and patriotism and leading repeated Turkish campaigns against
“terrorism”, to weaken the working class by creating a gap between Kurdish
and non-Kurdish proletarians.

Based on the real national oppression of the Kurds, the PKK began a
guerrilla campaign in 1984 for the independence of the region. The conflict
has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths; more than 3,000 villages have
been destroyed by the army, causing, according to official figures, the
“displacement” of more than 375,000 people driven from their homes and
reduced to the status of homeless. This brutal and constant repression by
the police, military and judges against any Kurdish expression, even the
most reformist, pushed many Kurds to sympathize with the PKK.

Although it calls itself a workers’ party and claims to want socialism, the
PKK embodies a bourgeois nationalist response to oppression, which had been
aggravated by the 1980 coup. Its “socialism” was a version of the state
capitalism existing in China or the USSR, and for a time itsought support from Moscow; but after the fall of the USSR, the PKK
soon abandoned its pseudo-socialist discourse to swear its respect for
Islamic values.

Then it bartered the demand for independence down to that of a simple
autonomy of the Kurdish regions in Turkey as part of a cantonal organization
of the country: the “democratic confederalism”: a pure bourgeois
perspective!

Breaking with the usual policy of Turkish governments, and despite the
hostility of nationalist circles, the military and even some of his
supporters, the AKP ended some discrimination against the Kurds and the
police and judicial harassment which were common before; it entered into
negotiations with the PKK which, despite not having reached a final
agreement, had led to the end of guerrilla actions.

But in recent months the Erdogan government had again taken up the
traditional anti-Kurdish rhetoric. This was not for electoral
considerations, because the AKP has lost its Kurdish supporters in this
affair without gaining nationalist voters.

In reality what the Turkish ruling class fears most is any creation of an
autonomous Kurdish state entity on the Syrian border because it might fuel
separatist outbreaks among the disinherited Kurdish masses of Turkey. The
defense not only of the unity of the country, but above all of the
undisturbed rule of capitalist order not only in the poor southern
peripheral regions, but in the big cities and factories of Anatolia or the
Bosporus, requires, in the Turkish bourgeois view, that Syrian Kurds fail to
conquer actual or juridical independence.

That is why the Turkish government did everything it could to leave Kurdish
fighters of the YPG (related PKK) in Kobanî isolated against those of the
Islamic State (IS), thus bloodily repressing solidarity demonstrations in
October 2014 (more than 30 dead). It has long refused to engage militarily
against the IS and when it finally officially resolved to do so under US
pressure and authorized the use of its airfields by the anti-IS coalition it
actually directed most of its strikes against PKK positions in Iraq and
Turkey, also in Syria.

According to the Turkish authorities by mid-October the balance sheet of the
resumption of fightingwith the
PKK
in July resulted in over 150 dead among the police and military, while more
than 2,000 “terrorists” were killed.

THE HDP, TURKISH
SYRIZA

The HDP (People's Democratic Party) is a party of mainly Kurdish origin,
close to the PKK, often described as the legal front of the party. But in
fact it gathers within itself various small groups and leftist parties,
environmentalists, Maoists, Trotskyists, etc. which allowed it to have a
national audience and made for comparisons with the Greek Syriza party.
Garnering 13% of the vote in parliamentary elections in June it for the
first time crossed the 10% barrier, which allowed it obtain parliamentary
deputies (80). The European “left of the left” hailed the electoral success
with almost as much enthusiasm as it had done for the electoral victories of
Syriza...

The HDP practices a strict parity and quota policy: it has two
“co-presidents”, a man and a woman, its candidates for election are 50% male
and 50% female, and it reserves 10% of its candidate positions for LGBT
people (Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans-sexual). It does not hesitate to speak of
self-management, the fight against the exploitation of workers and to
sometimes make anti-capitalist speeches, etc...

But it’s basically an inter-classist, reformist party. Officially associated
with the “Party of European Socialists” (a grouping of Social Democratic
MEPs), it wants to democratize Turkey by introducing a new constitution that
would guarantee the rights of minorities. The HDP has served as an
intermediary in the negotiations that took place in 2013 between the PKK and
the government, and it has long believed in the possibility of resuming
negotiations. Therefore, even though the government had resumed the war with
the PKK, and the AKP and Erdogan has multiplied the denunciations of
“Kurdish terrorism,” with the Prime Minister openly accusing the HDP of
complicity, and although it had denounced the “criminal actions of the AKP”,
the HDP did not hesitate to enter the interim government formed by the AKP
to run the country until new elections!

This does not spare it from the accusations of media close to the AKP and
Erdogan himself of supporting terrorism, nor has it avoided the attacks
against its public meeting places; its ministers and deputies were prevented
by police from visiting the town of Cizre subject to a military blockade,
etc. Cornered in an increasingly untenable position, the HDP was finally
forced to withdraw from the government, just weeks after its formation.

This experience speaks volumes about what can be expected from this party,
not only by the workers, but the poor masses in general, including Kurds:
just like Syriza and like all reformist parties, the HDP can ultimately only
prostrate itself to bourgeois demands and to defend national capitalism.

The reformist, collaborationist parties, who have only the watchwords of
peace and democracy on their lips, are adversaries of
proletarian emancipation; they are not on the workers’ side, but on the side
of the exploiters even when they are the target of reactionary bourgeois
forces as in Chile yesterday or today in Turkey. The proletarians cannot
rely on these false friends who always betray to defend them. In Turkey as
elsewhere, they can only rely on their own class struggle, on their
independent class organization in terms of the immediate defense struggle as
well as on the political level.

The situation of Turkish proletariat is not easy, they are confronted with a
particularly brutal state, which to ensure the smooth functioning of
capitalism, uses all means, legal and illegal, passing alternately and in
parallel from the democratic method to the dictatorial method of government.

The horrible massacre of Ankara, coming after previous attacks and
atrocities, again demonstrates that calls for peace are only window dressing
and the electoral circus a deadly impasse. Faced with the contradictions
that rend capitalist Turkey and, to an even greater degree, the neighboring
Middle Eastern countries, if they do not want to remain the eternal victims
of the capitalists and their State, the workers have no other choice but to
fight, and on an independent class basis.

Faced with the social war carried on by the bourgeois, they will need to
engage, under the leadership of their internationalist and international
class
party, the class war against capitalism that, overcoming all ethnic,
religious and national divisions, goes beyond national borders to engulf the
entire region.

The social weight that the very development of capitalism in recent years
has given the proletariat of Turkey is the guarantee that it has the
potential strength to accomplish this great future task, in conjunction with
the proletarians of all countries.